I got this massive lot of yarn off of facebook marketplace for $20, the only problem is that it smells like cigarette smoke and I am super sensitive to smells, especially tobacco smoke. 

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It’s not too bad, on the scale of: family house that hasn’t had smokers in it since the 90’s (faint, not too bothersome) to gift from grandmother who smokes two packs a day (dear god you’re never getting it out), it is firmly on the old house side. 

But its also 30+ balls of yarn, most still in their packaging, they’re dense, and I am unsure how far down the smoke smell goes. 

note: just because 
I ruled it out 
doesn’t mean it 
doesn’t work.
I can’t have any 
scents in my laundry detergent, household
cleaning products, 
or even some hand soaps. 
I am an extreme case. 

Air Freshener 

Air freshener would make it worse, unless you just want to cover the smell with a more obnoxious one, just skip this.   

Bake at 175 in the oven

If I was able to guarantee what fibers were in these yarns I might have gone with that option, however longer exposure to heat will cause degradation even in pure polyesters. 
What it comes down to is that some polyester blends can breakdown at ~180°F and nylon at 160°F. Avoiding a chemistry tangent, I’m not going to put yarn, especially ‘art yarn’, in the oven.  

Activated charcoal

Activated charcoal is also out for this big of a lot. Unless I was going to funnel activated charcoal into the center of some of these balls (store bought so that would be relatively easy) it would take months to get the smell out. 

Outside in the sun

I started here, seeing as it took almost 0 effort. I took all of the yarn, removed the labels (they trapped a lot of the smell), and put them all outside in the sun on a day with a good breeze. 

This actually worked, I was quite surprised at how much just an afternoon was able to do. I essentially dumped them on some clean cardboard I put in the driveway once I got home. 

At time of writing (evening may 10th) it’s been about 2 days and the smell has dramatically reduced in most of them.
A few of the yarns weren’t smelling any better, these were mostly on cardboard tubes like crochet cotton, which I suspected held most of the smell, so they needed to come off. If I was going to go through that work I might as well wash them. 

Washing it

Uhg, this means I’m going to need to skein all of the yarn...
I didn’t fully finish the skeins by twisting them, I wrapped the yarn around something (the lid for the container I soaked them in), tied the two ends and then used scrap yarn to tie the skein together in three places around the loop. 
          Vinegar
I’m going to be honest, I don’t find vinegar to be strong enough as a deodorizer. Normally I go for oxyclean or borax. 
          Oxyclean
I started with oxyclean, 1 scoop (I know that’s not according to instructions) and about 3 gallons of water. I put the yarn in, squeezed it to make sure it was soaked through and let it soak for a few hours. When I got back to it, the smell was worse. This was because the yarn was wet, but I was hoping that something would have happened. 
If I go that route again, I need to add detergent, not just household soap to the mix. I rinsed the yarn and agitated it in between soaks then moved on to borax which I should have started with as it is a more powerful deodorizer than oxiclean. 
          Borax
I used ~2 tbsp of detergent, like 6 shakes of the borax box (very scientific), and the same container as before. I also made sure to agitate the skeins when they were fully soaked to get the detergent into the fibers. 

May 9, 2025

And now they shall soak overnight, or longer depending on how busy I am tomorrow. 

May 10, 2025

Left to soak overnight, rinsed the yarn out then hung outside to dry

May 16, 2025

Everything got left outside for about 5 days, I think it got rained on at least once. They don't smell like cigarettes anymore! I think that some of the strands on skeins with a wool content are a bit felted together, but nothing unfixable. There might be some sun bleaching too although if I had wanted to test that I should have taken samples beforehand. 
In conclusion: it worked, it was a ton of work, but it doesn't smell anymore. This was only a small sample of the box I got, the rest is in my garage so I will probably be back with an extended update eventually on how I cleaned those. (Im thinking a ton of activated charcoal for the bigger ones, there are two new caron super savers that I realllly don't want to skein)

Updated as of May 15, 2025

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